A Slender Escape
by ClaudiaKarlOWCA
Summary: A Gravity Falls one-shot ft. someone famous among the internet, Slenderman. If you don't know who Slenderman is, here's a sort of explanatory prequel: If you DO know who Slendy is, read on! Slight Wendy/Dipper shipping, NO FLAMES Started out as a one-shot, but I have answered your pleas for more chapters. Rated K to be safe.
1. A Slender Escape

~A Slender Escape~

~Dipper's POV~

"Gotcha!" I shout in triumph, holding up the small lizard I have in my hands.

"Wow, Dipper, that's the eighth one today!" Mabel says, taking the green-brown lizard from my hands.

We'd been in the woods for a couple hours seeing how many of the 5-inch lizards each of us could catch.

"Hey, there, friend." She giggles. "What's your name?"

"I think he looks like a Fred." I say.

"I'm going to call you… Bruce!"

"Bruce?" I ask. "But he's so… Not Bruce-y."

"Bruce!" She nods, smiling.

I shrug, continuing into the woods to find another.

"Bye, little fella." Mabel says to Bruce, letting him go.

When she sets him on the ground, he just crawls up onto her shoulder, making her giggle. Continuing to travel deeper into the woods, I soon become agitated. It was getting late, dark, and I didn't even want to think about what lived in these woods.

"Hey, Mabel?"

"Yeah, Dipping Sauce?"

Dipping Sauce has been her nickname for me ever since we'd snuck into Skull Fracture, a crazy biker joint in town, to interrogate Manly Dan, the local lumberjack, of murder. We'd made fake ID's to get in, I was Sir Dipping Sauce and she had been Lady Mableton.

"Don't call me that. Anyway, we should probably head back to the Mystery Shack. It's getting late and I don't want to be caught outside after dark. You know, because of the… Stuff." I say, kind of afraid to say "supernatural stuff", for fear that if I say it, one might actually appear. Mabel laughs.

"You sure you're not just a scared-y cat?"

"I am not a scared-whatever, I just think we shouldn't do anything crazy. Remember the gnomes? They might come back."

"Scared-y cat! Scared-y cat!" She says again.

"Am not! Now, come on, we should-"

"If you're not so scared, come and get me!" she begins to run farther into the woods, her laugh slowly fading away.

"Mabel!" I yell after her, beginning to pursue her.

"Mabel, come on! Who knows what's in these woods?! It's probably dangerous!"

I hear her laugh echo a little, closer this time. Running faster, I soon hear the leaves crunching under her feet. They soon stop.

"Hey, Dipper…" she says.

"Yeah?" I catch up to her and double over, holding my knees and catching my breath.

"Lookit."

She points to a spot on the ground, and I see what she means. There are footprints indented in the dirt. At first, they appear to be normal human footprints, but when I take a closer look at them, I see that they're different. They definitely aren't human, they're too…. Slender.

"Whoa." I mutter, pulling Book 3 out of my inside jacket pocket.

Book 3 was my book full of all, well, most of Gravity Falls' secrets. I had found it in these same woods by mistake when I'd been hanging signs for the Mystery Shack. I had no idea who had written it, but after a couple years' worth of entries, the book just stops, as if the writer mysteriously disappeared. I had sometimes wondered where Book 1 and Book 2 were, and if they even existed. Was the author still alive? I again had no idea.

Flipping through pages, I find a page with a picture of a footprint identical to the one in front of us. The page, however, is harder to read than the others, because it's quickly scrawled on the page, as if the person had been running when they'd written it. A very blurry photo sits in the middle of the page, and I barely make out what looks like a man in a suit.

"Uh, Dipper?" Mabel says, "I think you need to see this..."

"Not now, Mabel, I'm looking at these footprints."

"DIPPER. LOOK UP." She says in a more urgent tone.

I do, and I almost have a heart attack. In the distance, I could see _it._ I could see the suit man. Not his face, but his back, like he wasn't facing us. Taking a quick glance at the book, I barely make out a name.

Slenderman.

I'd heard the urban legends about him back home, but I never thought he was real. Until now, that is.

"Uh, Mabel?" I say.

"Yeah?"

"Run!" I yell, taking her hand and almost literally dragging her behind me.

I hear the leaves crunching under our feet, but I also hear the sound of another person, err, _thing's_ crunching steps. I don't dare look behind me, and it doesn't help when I hear Mabel yell

"Run faster! He's gaining!" her eyes are shut tight, and she's following me step for step.

"I'm going as fast as I can, and look! It's the Mystery Shack!"

Not allowing myself to feel relieved until it was gone, I run as fast as I can, my heart racing, and I barrel through the front door, drag Mabel inside, turn around, my eyes shut tight but still able to hear the slender thing gaining distance with incredible speed, and slam the door. Locking it and closing all the blinds, I try not to scream like a girl.

"What. Was. THAT?" I hear Mabel ask, gasping for breath.

She had never been interested in the supernatural until I found Book 3.

"I- I…" My voice is shaky.

"Whoa, guys, what's going on?"

Wendy walks into the room, and all I want to do is freak out and cry like a little girl, but I just stand there for a minute, staring at her.

"OHMYGOSHWENDYWESAWTHESCARIES TTHINGEVEROHMYGOSHWENDYITHOU GHTWEWEREGONNADIE!" Mabel yells.

"What? Ok, half-pint, slow down. Start over."

"Wendy." I say in a serious tone.

"Yeah?" she looks at me.

"Stay out of the woods."

"What?"

"Seriously, don't go in there anymore, even if you have to. Tell Soos, too. There's stuff in those woods, Wendy. Lots of bad stuff." My voice shakes a little.

"Wow. What's got you freaked, Dipping Sauce?"

I flip open the book to the page.

"This." I reply, pointing to the photo I now find utterly horrifying, "This is what's got me freaked."

"What is it?" Mabel finally pipes up.

"Slenderman."


	2. Recovery

~Two~

(Dipper's POV)

"What's a Slenderman?" Mabel asks.

I really wanted to tell her that I had no idea so that she wasn't scarred for life, but I wasn't going to lie to her like that. Sighing, I reply

"It's this... thing. I'm not quite sure exactly, but it's seriously evil. It's like, if you look at it you die or something." I look at the floor. "I don't really want to talk about it, okay?"

I hear the curtains rustle and look up to see Wendy looking out of them.

"Wendy, don't!" I yell.

"Chill out, Dipper, it's cool. There's nothing there."

She gestures to the window, inviting me to look. I hesitate, but trust her. I feel a little better when I look out the window and she's right, there's nothing there, but I don't feel _that_ much better. I know what I saw, and it freaks me out that it knows I saw it, too. Mabel looks at the clock.

"I'm going to go to sleep. I'm tired, and maybe we freaked out over nothing. Besides, it's gone now, so I'm going to bed." She says, giving Wendy a hug and leaving the room, holding Bruce in her hands.

Wendy goes back to the window, and I hear her mutter something along the lines of

"So you found him."

"What?"

"You found Slendy." She says louder, turning to me. "I'd always heard about him as a kid."

"Yeah, me too, but I never thought he was real until now."

"I didn't, either. Man, I can't believe he followed you guys, how'd it happen?"

I totally want to tell her that when he showed, I just punched him or something, but one does not simply _punch Slenderman._

"Well, first, we were looking at these footprints on the ground, but then when Mabel told me to look up, I saw him, too. He was really far away at first, but then he started getting closer, so that's when we started running. It's pretty much all running from there, so that's about it."

"Wait a second; isn't something really bad supposed to happen if you look at him, though?" She asks, her eyebrows knit together in confusion.

"Well, yeah, but nothing really did, other than the chasing thing." I shrug. "I guess the stories weren't as right as we thought."

"I guess so."

There's silence for a few seconds, but then Wendy says something that sort of shocks me. She says

"You know we're going to have to go back into those woods sooner or later, right?"

"I know." I sigh "I just hope it's later."

"Hey, Dipper?"

"Yeah?"

"How do you know about all this stuff? You know, the weird stuff going on in town, like the Dusk2Dawn. I've seen you carrying that book around all the time, is that it?"

"I- I…" I couldn't tell her about Book 3.

Could I? I trusted Wendy, could I trust her enough to keep the book a secret? Yes, I could. Sighing, I reply

"Yeah, it's the book." I pull it out of my inner jacket pocket and show her. "It's filled with all kinds of stuff like that."

I gingerly hand it to her, and she flips pages while I'm talking about it.

"Zombies, Gnomes, Ghosts, Cursed Doors, you name it. This book's got a lot in it."

She stops abruptly on a page, and I see it's the page with Slenderman on it. After reading a short passage, she gets really serious.

"Dipper, if this… _Thing _is going to keep messing with people, maybe we need to do something about it."

"Are you saying that we need to, I don't know, hunt it down?" my voice involuntarily cracks.

"Come on, man, I saw you handle those ghosts at the convenience store!"

"Wendy, I can't exactly prance around in a lamb costume and make Slenderman disappear!"

"I know, so that's why we've got to work together!"

I gulp and look out the window at the dark night outside, internally screaming.

"We'll need a plan before we just barge into the woods. Can we do it tomorrow, though? I'm getting pretty tired." I feign a yawn.

"I guess you're right." Wendy replies, also yawning. "I got to get home before my dad flips out about me being gone. See you, Dipper."

She goes to exit the Shack and my ever-growing panic takes over for a second.

"Wendy, wait!"

She turns to look at me.

"That thing might still be out there! Can't you get, I don't know, a ride or something?"

"Please, I'm not walking home with stuff like this goin' on. I was just gonna steal the Mystery Cart."

She twirls the keys to the Mystery Cart, a golf cart with question marks painted on it, and I sigh in relief a little.

"Later, dork."

"Later, Wendy." I say, but she's already gone.

I'm already worried about her, but I head to me and Mabel's attic bedroom anyway. Curling up into the covers of my bed, I sigh, hoping she makes it home okay and knowing that I might have a sleepless night. I kind of hope I do, because if I sleep, I dream, and if I dream tonight, I think I'll have a heart attack in my sleep.


	3. Devil at the Door

~Three~

(Dipper's POV)

I'm running through the woods as fast as I can possibly go, but it's still not fast enough. I can still see his face-less head at every corner, taunting me. The wind's howling loud enough to deafen a person, but I can still hear his crunching steps behind me. I can make out a vague light by the end of the woods, and I begin to try running faster. After a minute, the Mystery Shack comes into view. I can't wait to get in there, lock the door behind me and attempt to feel safe again. When I'm two feet from the porch steps, I feel something wrap around my ankle with a vice-like grip. My fingernails leave marks on the wooden steps as I'm dragged back into the woods with terrifying speed.

"NO!" I yell.

.o0o.

"NO!" I bolt upright, waking in a cold sweat. I'd figured I'd have a nightmare after the events of the day, but I'd still held out hope for that not being true. Sighing, I step out of bed and make my way downstairs to the kitchen. Filling a glass of water, I realize my hands are shaking and I become frustrated. _Tough guys don't freak out over a nightmare. Chill out, man._ I think. _But tough guys also don't see stuff like that everyday._ Another part of me replies. I turn around to go back upstairs, when I almost have a heart attack. There's a window facing me, but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part is that _it's open. _I know I should close it, but I can't muster up the guts to do it. What if _it_ comes back? I warily make my way to the window, slowly taking baby steps and sincerely hoping nothing jumps out at me. I feel a little better when I look out the window and see the porch light on, but I have to bite my tongue to keep from screaming when I look a little closer. _He's _there. The very thing that haunted my nightmares was on my porch, just standing there and waiting.

Slenderman was two steps away from knocking on my door.

I'm frozen in place, terrified that if I even think, it'll know I'm there. My breathing comes in shallow gasps, and I'm panicking more by the second, but adrenaline takes over and I slam the window, locking it and backing away in one foul swoop. I run upstairs, not caring about the shattered glass cup I left on the floor of the kitchen in my haste, because I have priorities, and dying an early death isn't even on the list. Bolting into the attic bedroom, I slam the door. Mabel stirs in her sleep and mumbles

"Bzzmphh, yes I'll have some cake."

I sigh, glad I didn't wake anyone. I try to calm down, but I'd like to see you try to recover from seeing your nightmares come to life in less than five minutes. My heartbeat racing, I sit on the edge of my bed trying to catch my breath. I was amazed that I'd slept earlier, so now, sleep definitely wasn't going to come. I drape a blanket over the window in our room, taking extra precautions. I can't help but think of Wendy. Did she make it home alright?

Did she make it home at all?

I can't let myself think like that right now, I have other things to do. First of all, I need to chill out a little. Second, I need to figure out what to do about this entire situation, and lastly, I need to come to terms with the fact that I am being stalked by a creature virtually unknown to man (unless you're a blogger, I guess.) Anyway, how could I set foot outside now? Even in the morning?

I think of what Wendy said about having to do something about Slenderman if he was going to keep messing with people. Maybe she's right; maybe something needs to be done. How would it be accomplished, though? I remember my parents always telling Mabel and me about how a little fear is healthy, but eventually all fears need to be faced. Slenderman is definitely a problem, and I needed to get some information on him before I tried anything drastic. I'd have to consult the book a lot more to come to a conclusion. Learning its weaknesses is a definite if I'm going to defeat it. Knowing whoever wrote Book 3 would be really helpful, but at this point in time I'm just hoping he isn't dead. I curl up under my blanket yet again and just lay there, staring at the ceiling, thinking about what could happen if I did defeat Slenderman, and what could happen if I didn't. Next thing I know, I'm waking up to Mabel shaking me.

"Dipper, come on! It's eleven thirty, wake up!"

"Huh? Wazzit Mabel?"

I sit up, amazed that I fell asleep after what happened last night.

"Yeah, sure," I tell her, rubbing my eyes, "I'll meet you downstairs in a sec."

"Okay, Dipper! There are pancakes on the table if you're hungry!"

"Thanks, Mabel."

She skips downstairs and I change out of my pajamas into my usual orange shirt, blue jacket, shorts, and blue pine tree hat. Sticking Book 3 in the interior pocket of my jacket, I make my way downstairs, too. When I walk into the kitchen, I get a sudden feeling of dread. The porch isn't going to look the same again, at least not until this whole thing is sorted out.

"Hey, Dipper, what're you doing?" Mabel asks.

"Huh? Oh, um, looking out the window."

"So… What's up?"

"What do you mean?"

"I heard you get up last night, you know. You were freaking out. You okay?"

"Oh, sure, yeah, I just had to, uh… Do some… Stuff."

I didn't like lying to her, but I didn't want to freak her out, either.

"Oh." She says, knowing that I'm lying, but going with it. "Okay."

I eat my pancakes and we just sit there in silence until I hear Gruncle Stan call us into the Shack. It's opening time, and Mabel and I sort of worked there, so we had to show up to "work". I, frankly, was more concerned with seeing if Wendy got home okay.

"Alright, look alive, people, we've got a lot of people to scam, err, a lot of people to sell to today."

I barely hear Stan talking over my own thoughts. I'm looking around the Shack, but I don't see Wendy. _Maybe she's just late_. I think. I'd have to check her rooftop hangout later, because I couldn't be sure yet. For now, I'd just wait and ask around. A good hour passes after her shift starts before panic begins to settle in me.

"Hey, Soos?" I ask. "You see Wendy today?"

"Sorry, dude, she called in sick."

That's when I become skeptic. Wendy was in perfect condition when she went home last night, and it hadn't been long enough for her to develop any illness overnight.

"Okay, thanks."

I then decide that I'm going to see for myself just how "sick" Wendy is. I wait until Gruncle Stan isn't in the room (that takes about 15 minutes) and sneak out. When I walk outside, I see Soos washing the Mystery Cart. Wait… Shouldn't that be at Wendy's house? She took it home, so why wasn't it there? Soos is washing it, so I walk up to him and ask

"Hey, Soos, didn't Wendy take that thing home last night?"

"No, dude, I found it at the edge of the woods."

That's when I panic. I don't think she made it home okay. I don't think she made it home at all.

"Can I borrow the it for a sec?"

"Sure, dude, just don't hit anybody." He replies, tossing me the keys.

I take the keys and get in the golf cart.

"Thanks, Soos!"

I remember the last time I had to drive this was when I saved Mabel from a gaggle of gnomes. I sincerely hope that I don't have to save Wendy from something even worse.


	4. Watching and Waiting

~Four~

(Dipper's POV)

I'm getting into the Mystery Cart when I hear Mabel yell

"Wait up, Dipper!"

"Mabel, what are you doing?"

"I'm coming with you, _durr_!"

"Mabel, I really don't think-"

"What? Are you embarrassed to take me to see your _girlfriend?"_

"She's not my girlfriend, and no, I'm not embarrassed, I just think it's not safe out there yet. You know, since yesterdays… _incident._"

"Pshh, come _on_, Dipper, you're not still scared, are you?"

"_No,_ I'm just being cautious. Besides, you were the one freaking out."

"I was not."

I don't bother arguing with her anymore as she gets in the passenger seat of the golf cart. Once she had her mind made up, no force on Earth could stop her. I start the golf cart and we head out into the woods. I'm really nervous to be heading into them again, but I was only doing it for a good reason. The whirring noise of the motor isn't helpful, because it sounds like the heavy breathing of a large beast. I know where Wendy's house is only because Gravity Falls is a small town and everybody lives at least a mile away from each other. The farthest that anyone lived was five miles from the main stretch of town, and it was Old Man Macguffin, so that explained a lot. I start to feel very uneasy along the way, and I begin to look around, almost waiting for something to happen. Something bad.

Maybe even evil.

Mabel interrupts my thoughts when she asks me

"You don't really think it exists, do you?"

I pause, not knowing if I do or not, but then I know just what to say. I reply

"Whether it does or not, we have to find Wendy."

Not a minute later we arrive at her house in the woods. It's a fairly large house that reminds me of something out of a slasher movie. I try not to think about that too much. Her dad's a lumberjack, so naturally he'd live close to his job. I keep this in mind when I'm taking a closer look at the house. There are axes everywhere and they make me kind of nervous, but I continue to the door. A welcome mat sits on the porch covered in dried out mud, and the door has a small knocker on it that's old, kind of rusty and resembles the head of a small deer. I take it in my hand and knock on the door. A hollow _thunk_ announces our arrival. I hear a dog bark and then loud footsteps come close to the door. The door opens and Wendy's dad, Manly Dan, is standing there looking down at us.

"Um… Hi?" I nearly squeak.

"Hi, there, have you seen Wendy?" Mabel goes for the more direct approach.

Dan just grunts in reply.

"Yeah, Wendy's here." Another reply comes from behind Dan.

A boy not much older than us steps onto the porch.

"Do you want me to go get her?"

"Sure!" Mabel replies. "Thanks, uh…"

"Call me Alex." He says, walking away.

"Cool. Thanks, Alex."

He and Manly Dan leave, and I hear Alex go up some stairs and open a door. Not soon after, Wendy comes out onto the porch alone. She looks nervous, and she keeps her back against the wall.

"Hey, guys." She says. "What's going on?"

When her voice is shaky, I know something's up. I hear a crunching noise, and Wendy tenses up. When I turn around, I see it's only a squirrel. Wendy sighs in relief, and I can tell she tries to hide it.

"We just wanted to bring you this." Mabel says, handing Wendy a small bowl-like object.

It's chicken soup, and I mentally facepalm. I should've thought of that. I'm now secretly glad that Mabel came along.

"No, seriously, guys, what's up? You never visit just to visit. Besides, I know this has been in Stan's fridge for, like, a week."

She'd seen through the ruse faster than I could say "opaque." I refrain from whistling in admiration.

"Okay, you caught us. We want to know what happened to you yesterday." I admit in defeat.

She looks at the ground, then the sky, and then her eyes linger on the woods.

"It followed me home."

"It?" I ask, hoping she wasn't about to say what I think she was about to say.

"You know what I mean."

I sometimes really hate it when I'm right. I wasn't about to rub an "_I told you so"_ in her face, but I _had_ told her not to go out to the woods. So now I'm probably being stalked by one of the most notorious killers _not_ known to man, and I might as well blame myself for everything because now Mabel and Wendy were in the middle of it. _What about Soos and Gruncle Stan?_ I think to myself. _They might be in this, too. _Maybe not, though. They hadn't seen him, err, _it _yet, so maybe it wasn't a problem.

_But how long will it be before they do?_


End file.
